Coal Rush

It seems two weeks ago I was leading up to the reason we have a nice little cabin in our back yard.

And leading up to the idea of taking over that cabin for my own purposes which now my husband refers to as the sweat shop. Yes I have a little factory out there.

We moved to this area…never mind all that. We live by a fabulous beach. We walk to the fabulous beach a lot. On a tour during the purchase of this house (I wasn’t there), my husband noticed in the basement, along a ledge were several lumps of coal. Not dull ugly coal. This was sleek, shiny coal. My husband was curious because he played baseball in a Cape Breton coal mining town for several seasons in his youth. So he knew a little about coal. He asked, “What’s with the coal?”

The fellow told him… In a nutshell, a boat carrying coal fromVirginiain the 1920’s ran aground somewhere out in the bay and lost all her cargo. And so, he said, it washes up onto the beach. He left the coal on the ledge for us.

I saw it and loved it because it is black and shiny and rock solid but lighter in weight, with sparkly seams. And so began my quest for coal because I love to scrounge and hunt, especially stuff that doesn’t bite.

During our first years, on our daily beach walks it became a ritual to look for coal. We timed our walks around low tides, best times for gathering. Sometimes we collected politely and cooperatively, one of us doing the high tide line, the other walking the close to the waters edge. Other times it was dog-eat-dog, a mad sprint to grab a piece in view. Sometimes we faked each other out. A normal amount was 2-4 pieces each. There were days we collected more, but there was size and quality to consider, the gleam and sheen and streaks. It was thrilling for me, my adrenalin flowing at a feverish pitch when I spotted a piece, especially a big one, some in the size range of a lemon, the rush of contentment with putting such a piece into my pocket or bag.

We put the coal into a dish on the mantel and soon needed a bucket. Robert bought me an enormous glass vase and I filled that and placed it on the floor. Our guests noticed and asked. We told them. We shouldn’t have because all of our visitors began to participate in the hunt for coal. That’s how nice this coal was. They kept it. They didn’t even give us a cut. They’d sneak off to the beach before us to look for it.